


A Legacy to Protect

by MissWhip



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Falling In Love, Family, Love, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-06 14:33:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11038140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissWhip/pseuds/MissWhip
Summary: A mad scientist needs her henchman as much as a henchman needs a mad scientist to work with. Max's family has a long legacy with Kinga's.  Maybe there's a reason for that.





	1. Chapter 1

Max sighed and shifted in his chair. The coffee in his cup had gone lukewarm, and he gave it a swirl before lifting it to his lips. It went down with a grimace. In retrospect, he was lucky that Kinga hadn’t shot him out of the airlock on the moon base after he’d had Jonah eaten at her wedding.

No, instead, she had put him on the night shift. Monitoring the scope and keeping an eye on their experiment – while he slept. It didn’t matter that Jonah had survived and they had managed to put him back in his ship; still part of their test. The first part had been a failure, a complete failure, and it was all his fault.

Not only did he believe that, but so did Kinga. It was what she had screamed at him for at least half a day before commanding him to get out of her sight and sending word to him later that he was on the night shift for the foreseeable future. 

That was two months ago. Two months since he’d even seen Kinga, much less spoken to her. He’d written dozens of versions of the same apology letter, but they never sounded right and he was too scared to send them to her. Truth be told he also wasn’t comfortable lying to her, and he would be lying if he said he was sorry. Max was sorry that he’d upset her, but he could care less that the wedding was ruined.

He sneered at the scope screen as he watched Jonah turn in his sleep. Jonah didn’t deserve Kinga -she was too good for him! He wasn’t even evil! He was some useless goody goody do-gooder. In the same thought, Max sighed, no, Jonah wasn’t good enough, and neither was her half-assed assistant. Letting his chin fall to his chest, he mentally berated himself up and down. Some smart plan he’d had. What had he been thinking? That she was going to suddenly turn and realize that she loved him like he loved her? All it had bought him was two months of painful solitude. Even the band and the Skeleton Crew had been avoiding him, afraid of incurring Kinga’s wrath by proxy.

He was a lonely man.

His cup drained, he dragged himself out of his chair and walked over the machine. It was empty, someone must have snaked the last cup behind his back. He started to make a new pot and was pouring in the grounds when he heard something. Turning, he saw the face of Pearl on his screen.

“Pearl!” He slammed the pot back down and ran back to the screen. 

The matriarch of the Forrester family appeared to be looking all over the room, “Is Kinga around?” She didn’t bother to lower her voice.

“No, she’s asleep.” Max involuntarily whispered, tilting his head in the direction of the living quarters.

“Good, the last thing I need is another round of her attitude.”

“Where have you been?” He asked, almost instantly regretting his tone. 

Surprisingly, Pearl didn’t seem to notice the agitation in Max’s voice, “Waiting for her to cool down. When that girl gets going, she never shuts up!”

“She hasn’t spoken to me for two months.”

Pearl’s eyebrow raised, “What’s your secret?”

Max shrugged, “Ruin her wedding for ratings and make her really hate you?” 

“Relax, small-fry, you did good work.” The matriarch rolled her eyes and continued to look around.

“I did?”

“Yeah, you’re like your father. He cleaned up after Clayton, you clean up after Kinga.”

Max was confused, and he studied her face for signs that she was setting him up. Pearl looked completely honest though. “Sometimes I forget you knew my dad.” He chuckled. It was the first time he’d cracked a smile in months.

“Who do you think trusted me to leave you to me?” Pearl rolled her eyes again, “Not his smartest move, to be sure, but I’m sure it was better than the foster system.”

“Yeah, the Forrester system.” Max smoothed his hair back, and he thought a moment about that, “Why didn’t you ever try to get rid of me like you did her?”

“Besides the fact that it’s always good to have a halfway competent spineless jellyfish around?” Pearl pursed her lips, “Because Kinga was going to need you around.”

“Always a second banana.” He flopped down into his chair.

“That girl’s got too much of her father in her. She’s all ambition and no follow through. Frankly, if it wasn’t for you and Frank, the Forrester legacy probably would have ended with me.”

He felt a twinge of pride, “You mean that?”

“Don’t go getting all big for your britches,” Now she was chastising him and he felt more at home. Pride never sat too well in his chest, “You and your father have always done the heavy lifting.” She shook her head in disgust, “God that’s hard to admit.”

“I actually think Kinga’s pretty good at all this mad scientist stuff.” He was talking under his breath, but she caught it.

“She’ll never be as good as me until she starts to live up to the Forrester name. Not her father’s take on it, but mine!”

“She will, she just needs more time.”

“Time? Why do you think I’m here?” Pearl suddenly grew smaller in the frame, and he could see her hands shaking at him, “What the hell have you two been doing for the last two months?”

Max shrugged, “Nothing.”

“Exactly! I hear through the grapevine that you’ve got a test subject up there, mentally recovering, while you could be destroying him!”

“Don’t look at me! I can’t make Kinga go back to the experiment! She won’t even talk to me.” He threw up his arms in frustration before running his hand through his hair, “Maybe she actually liked Jonah, I don’t know.”

At that, Pearl burst into raucous laughter, “Yeah, and I loved Clayton’s father!” She clapped her hands together, letting herself dissolve into giggles before wiping away the tears from her eyes along with some runny mascara, “You and Frank – same sense of humor!”

Max wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Part of him was relieved that Pearl was treating the ratings-marriage like the joke that he thought it was, but the other part of him knew she was still pissed at them for not getting back to work and the other shoe was going to drop eventually.

It turned out he was very astute about mad scientists, as Pearl did a 180 and suddenly turned serious, “Both of you need to sort this out and get back to work.” She ground out each word at him like little knives being shoved into his henchman heart.

“You should talk to her,” Max insisted, “She’ll listen to you! She’ll do whatever you tell her to.”

Pearl looked at him as if he just said the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. Considering her two companions, it was a well-practiced gaze, “If I wanted to talk to her, I wouldn’t have shown up in the middle of the night, would I?”

“No?”

“If I step in then Kinga will never get it together on her own. That’s what you’re for!” She pointed at him, jabbing the camera in the process. 

“She won’t talk to me!”

“What did I say? You’re the heavy lifter! Suck it up, face her, and get this experiment back on track. You’re a team. Make. It. Work!” The last sentence was punctuated by a snap from her well-manicured fingernails, “Don’t forget that your family is part of the Forrester name too.”

Max nodded. His father was Clayton’s assistant, and his grandfather had been an assistant to Pearl for a very short time before meeting an unfortunate end. One of the few mistakes Pearl seemed to regret and hadn’t caused herself. Before that, his great-grandfather, and his great-great-grandfather, and all before them had been some of the most diabolical henchmen to ever… hench? He wasn’t sure of the term. Pearl was right, he had a legacy of his own to uphold.

“Yes, Dr. Forrester.” He straightened up, lifting his chin and looked her in the eyes.

“That’s what I like to hear.” She had a severe smile on her face, the kind that only a Forrester can wear. Kinga had gotten that from her.

“I’ll get Moon 13 back on track.”

“Good, and don’t tell my granddaughter that I called.”

“Absolutely not.” As soon as the words left his mouth, the screen went back to the view of a sleeping Jonah on the Satellite of Love. He hadn’t moved an inch since the last time Max had seen him. He tugged on his uniform, putting it into place with an air of perfection. Marching out of the main room, he strode down the hallway. Two members of the Skeleton Crew walked past him, coffee mugs in hand, looking at him as though he were a man walking to his death.

He might be, for all he knew. As he stood outside Kinga’s door, he felt like he was going back to that advice that had gotten him in trouble in the first place. Doug McClure’s advice to fill Kinga’s world with chaos to establish some sort of alpha-maleness fell flat. As he raised his hand to knock on her door, he thought about that moment. Kinga didn’t want any chaos, but maybe if he showed some assertiveness – in her world – she would respond more favorably to that? He wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t ready to give in yet, for his family name, or her.

He knocked on the door, a more jittery knock than he would have liked, but still. It took guts to knock on a mad scientist’s door at 3am. 

The sound of stomping feet was not long after, and the door slid open with a loud, “What?” Kinga was standing in the door frame, clutching her nightgown around her, clearly groggy. When she saw it was Max, she rolled her eyes and turned away from him. The door started to close and Max stepped into the frame, one hand on the door to hold it back.

“Max, get out!” Kinga tied the belt of her robe, ready to have her hands free for any necessary slapping that her henchman might require since he had clearly lost his mind.

“King – Dr. Forrester – I need to talk to you.”

Sitting down the edge of her bed, she folded her arms. She didn’t speak, but narrowed her eyes at him. He didn’t address her by her formal title very often.

“Okay. As of tonight, I am done with the graveyard shift.”

Kinga raised an eyebrow.

“I am coming back on the day shift with you.” He realized at this moment that he was pointing at her and he quickly pulled her back, “And if you’re still pissed at me, fine. Don’t speak to me, you don’t ever have to speak to me again, but we need to get this experiment back on track.”

Now both eyebrows were up, but her mouth was still closed, her lips getting tighter by the minute.

“Right now, I’m not being much of a henchman, and you’re not being a mad scientist.”

The eyes went from surprised to murderous.  
“We’re failing in our mission, and Heston is getting stronger while you –“ He swallowed, “sulk.”

“I DO NOT SULK!” Kinga got up off the bed, walking toward him with fists clenched at her side.

Max had to fight the urge to step back and flee as she approached. She was chest to chest with him in a matter of seconds, their noses almost touching. No matter how tired she was from being woke up in the middle of the night, the fire in her eyes was unmistakable. Tightening his jaw, he stood his ground, trying to ignore the heat in him that only that look could ignite, “You are sulking.”

He felt her hot breath on him. She was practically growling, “Get out.” 

When he didn’t move, she raised her arm and he braced for the hit. Instead she was pointing over his shoulder, “Get out!”

“Fine.” Gathering what was left of his confidence, he turned from the red-haired scientist and walked back out into the hallway. The door closed behind him. For a second, he was certain that his knees were going to give out. He wasn’t sure how long he stood out there in the hall, but he was suddenly aware of Kinga’s door opening behind him. Turning, he saw her there, glaring at him.

“I will expect you there on the floor, with my breakfast made, 5am sharp.”

“Yes, Dr. Forrester.”

“And knock that off, it’s Kinga.” The door closed again, and Max breathed a sign of relief. 

She was talking to him again.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

“Heston! Enough lying around – time for an invention exchange!” 

Jonah flinched and looked up from his breakfast, the toast dropping from his hand.

“Oh yay, this again.” Gypsy grumbled from her place near the ceiling where she was making yet another round of repairs.

“Uh..” Jonah looked to the bots, and Crow and Servo shrugged before frantically starting to throw stuff around. Pots and pans went flying as they looked for something, anything, to present to the Mads.

Crow grabbed Jonah’s spork off his plate and held it up, waving it in front of the camera. Jonah quickly picked up his lead and gestured, “We have this amazing spork! A combination of a fork and a spoon, it’s the best of both worlds!”

“A spork?” Kinga practically spit out the words, “That’s it? A spork?”

“Well you didn’t give us any warning.” Jonah mumbled, putting the spork down. 

Servo shook back and forth, “First you have Jonah eaten, then you come back two months later – with no explanation – and ask for an inventiopn – on this the day of my daughter’s wedding?”

“What? You have a daughter?” Crow leaned forward to look around Jonah.

“No, he doesn’t have a daughter.” Jonah waved them off.

“You don’t know that!” Servo protested but Jonah held up his hand over the bot’s mouth, “Guys! Don’t bring up weddings!” He hissed at them.

Kinga stomped her foot, “That’s enough! Max! Get our invention!”

Max held up his hands, “We don’t have one.”

She grabbed his collar and pulled him close, “What do you mean we don’t have one?”

“We don’t have one,” He didn’t try to twist out of her grasp.

“Damn.” She released her grip, “Alright Heston.” She tugged on her uniform to pull it down, “So we don’t have an invention to exchange with you today.”

“Now correct me if I’m wrong.” Crow piped up, “But doesn’t that mean we get a stay of execution for today?”

“No!” Kinga sneered at him, “Of course it doesn’t, you are my – “

“Actually, Kinga?” Max raised his index finger.

“Now what?” 

He leaned in, “We don’t have a movie for today either.”

“We don’t have a movie?” She looked like she was ready to throw a tantrum. 

“No, we were waiting for your final approval on the new list and we didn’t get it.”

Kinga stopped, “Oh, right.” She face palmed herself, “I knew I forgot something.” Turning back to Jonah, she assumed her best mad scientist stance, “I’ve decided to grant you a stay of execution, because I am so benevolent. You have until tomorrow, Heston, to come up with an invention and then – the experiment starts again!”

“Yeah, round two!” Max interjected, holding up two fingers and looking very like a Ghostbusters logo.

“We will break your mind, Jonah Heston!” Kinga smiled, “Hit the button Max!”

With that, she strode out of the room, the door shutting behind her. Max watched after her and then walked over to the button.

“Wait wait wait!” Jonah ran up to the camera, “Don’t hit it yet!”

“What?” Max looked at him.

“I wanted to ask you some questions.”

Max rolled his eyes, “No, I will not help you escape. Yadda yadda yadda.”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Then what?”

“Why did you try to kill me?” All of the bots echoed his question with an angry “Yeah!”

“I,” Max forced a laugh, “I didn’t try to kill you.”

“You did so!”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

Crow and Servo shoved their way in front of Jonah, screaming “Did too!” at the tops of their mechanical lungs.

“Fine, fine! But it wasn’t really about killing you!”

“Could’ve fooled me” Jonah gave a sign of exasperation.

“No, your death was just – a means to your end. I wanted to stop that wedding as quick as I could, that seemed like the best way.”

“Why didn’t you just use the tube and send me back?”

“Because then Kinga would have brought you back!” 

Jonah looked at him, did it means he was going more crazy if he said that Max’s answer made sense in some capacity? “But why kill me, Max? What did I ever do to you?”

“You exist?” Max shrugged, “And I’m evil?”

Gypsy came down from the ceiling, dropping the wrench onto the table, “I know why.” Her voice was sing-song, like that of a playground child with a secret, “He didn’t want anyone else marrying Kinga. Even if it was a cynical ratings marriage for the fanfics.”

The expression on Max’s face said it all, and it wasn’t lost on the crew.

“Aww, Max.” He sighed, “Do you like Kinga?”

“No! No of course not! She’s my boss! We’ve known each other since we were kids! I’m her second in command, it would be so awkward – yes. Yes, I love her.” He covered his eyes with his hands, not wanting to look at them.

Predictably, the entire crew of the Satellite of Love burst into a round of “Max loves Kinga!” 

“Oh god.”

“Max, this is great!” Gypsy called to him.

“It is?”

“Yeah, if you can get Kinga to love you back, she’ll leave Jonah alone!”

Max waved his hands, “She doesn’t actually love Jonah, she just wanted to marry him for the ratings. Ratings we already got by accidentally killing our test subject during the season finale.”

Jonah pointed to himself with both of his thumbs, “Hey, still here.”

“I know.” Gypsy nodded as best a bot with no neck could nod, “It didn’t get the fanfiction that Kinga wanted either, so…” Jonah twirled his index finger in a circle to complete Gypsy’s point for her.

“So she’ll be?”

“You are so dense!” Servo groaned.

“Yeah, I’m an idiot and even I get it!” Crow rolled his eyes, “She’ll be looking for other opportunities! You’ll have a chance with her!”

“I’ll never have a chance with her.” Max looked down, “She’s told me that I repulse her.”

“If you repulsed her, she’d have shot you out the airlock.”

“I guess so.”

“What does every fanbase love?”

“A twist?

“No, Shyamalan, they love a couple that doesn’t seem like they’re going to get together, and do!” Jonah grinned, “You and Kinga? Who would see that coming?”

Max thought about it, that was true, “I could try to pitch it to Kinga.”

“She’ll never go for it if you tell her.”

“Yeah, you have to make her think that she thought of it.”

Jonah held up a hand, “I have an idea. We’ll help you get together with Kinga, if you do something for us.”

“Like what?” Max knew the other shoe was dropping, but if he had a chance with Kinga, maybe a deal was worth it.

“If this is successful, you find some other some test subjects to do your little experiments on.”

Max thought about it. She would kill him if she knew that he would, in any way, have assisted in her subjects escaping. It went against every part of him that was a mad scientist, and every part of him that was a faithful henchman. It went against generations of his own family legacy.

“Deal.”


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

The last few nights, Max had been going out in the middle of the night to meet with Jonah in the main room. With the Skeleton crew being the boneheads that they were, it wasn’t hard to pull off without anyone noticing what was going on.

Besides, Max justified to himself. He wasn’t exactly plotting to let Jonah and the bots go by untethering their ship or smuggling them onto the base – nothing overtly conventionally evil.

Speaking of conventional evil though, the henchman was impressed with just how devious his fellow Gizmonic employee actually was. It was all temporary, of course, that was part of Jonah’s condition, but for a time sensitive plot, Max had to admit that it was pretty evil. 

“You know, Heston, you’d have made a good mad scientist.” Max laughed, going over the plans with him.

Jonah shrugged, “No thanks, not for me. I don’t have the follow through.”

“For a not evil guy, you certainly have some good bad ideas.”

“But I couldn’t actually do them.”

Max looked surprised, “You’re okay when I do them? You work for Gizmonic!”

“What about Gizmonic?”

Tilting his head to one side, Max sighed, “They’re not exactly a nice company. I mean, they created the Forrester family.”

“You’re telling me that Gizmonic institute has some sort of Mad Scientist 101 class.”

“Yeah, Kinga and I, we both got A’s.”

“Shit.” Jonah leaned forward on his elbows, “Why though?”

“Gizmonic likes an across the board approach,” Max illustrated his point with his hands, “You got good science on his end, and mad science on this end, and you know, they’re banking on getting something, they don’t care where it comes from.”

Now Jonah had to think about it. Why hadn’t there been a recovery mission for him? For that matter, why not Mike or Joel? It was hard for him to really begin to wrap his head around the notion that he might be dependent on his own kidnappers to get home again. He was lucky that one of the mads was lovesick enough – for someone other than himself – that he could exploit it to try to escape.

“Alright, anyway.” Jonah pulled back, he couldn’t focus on that right now, he had to get this plan into action, “So can you do all this?”

“Oh yeah!” Max looked at his plans, and then looked back to Jonah sheepishly, “I’m just not an idea guy.”

“Well if you can pull this off, you can make serious money and I can get out of here without anyone knowing it was you.”

“Plus, major mad scientist cred!” Gypsy called out. 

Jonah looked up, suddenly noticing the bot where she was ‘sleeping’ near the ceiling.

“Gypsy, what are you doing here?”

“I sleep here?”

“The bots sleep?” Max asked.

“I don’t know?” Jonah looked at him, confused, “Well, at least it’s Gypsy. She won’t talk.”

“Fair enough. See you soon Heston.” Max hit the button and the screen faded to black.

************

The next morning, Max was in the kitchen at 4:30. One counter was entirely dedicated to Kinga’s meal prep, and no one was allowed to work there except her and himself. Although Kinga was rarely in the kitchen herself, so much so that the Skeleton Crew used it as an informal break room.

On the counter, Max tended to Kinga’s breakfast with a practiced skill. He toasted her bagel, applied the cream cheese with strawberry, and poured the boiling water over her morning coffee grounds from beans he’d roasted himself. 

Behind him, he heard the whispers of the various crew members. He wasn’t immune to the gossip. The Skeleton crew might be little more than unskilled lackeys, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t pick on him for being, what they called him, “Kinga’s lapdog.” It had bothered him at first, but he’d learned to ignore it after awhile. 

When everything was done, he placed it all carefully on Kinga’s morning tray and took it to her door. She opened the door promptly at 5, and he held out the tray to her. 

“Kinga?”

“Oh my god, Max, I’m eating!” 

He looked at her. Her red hair was down, and messy from the night before. Sleep in her eyes was accompanied by a light pink smudge of cream cheese on the tip of her nose. Everything about her was adorable, and he desperately wanted to wake up to that one day. Even if she still demanded that he make her breakfast, he would request to lick that little dab of cream cheese off her nose – and lick anything else she asked.

Shaking his head, he pulled himself out of his daydreams and cleared his throat, “I wanted to run an idea by you.”

Kinga blinked once, twice, three times, “You have an idea?”

“Yes.”

“But I’m the idea person.”

“You are, but I wanted to know if I could try something.”

She took another bite of the bagel, “Would I have to do anything?”

“No, not at all.”

“Would it cost me money?”

“No, it might actually make you some money, and then we could kick out the Large Hadron Collider guys in the basement.” 

“I don’t know Max, they pay a lot in rent.”

“Yeah, but I’m a little worried they’re going to create a black hole or something.”

She took a sip of coffee, “I was hoping they’d find the god particle, so I could steal it and become god.” The absurd statement was coupled with a chuckle and another drink of coffee. 

Max looked at her, wondering if she was being serious or not. There was that little smile in her eyes that betrayed her joke and they both shared a laugh. 

“You know, for all your failings, I do appreciate that you get most of my jokes.”

He looked down at the ground to hide the wide smile that crossed his face, “Thanks.”

“Alright, you have my permission to go forward with this project or whatever it is. Just don’t blow anything up, and don’t neglect your duties to me. I come first.”

“Always.” Max nodded, and he took his leave.

Kinga would be remiss if she hadn’t noticed that his voice seemed to lower an octave with that last statement.

It was surprising. It was nice. It was surprising how nice it was.


End file.
